Why the Yale and George Mason University poll attempt to tie “extreme weather” to global warming is rubbish

Since warming hasn’t been cooperating lately, in desperation, Yale and George Mason University are trying to use a poorly worded and loaded poll to convince us that “weather is climate”. Problem is, the data does not support it.

Here’s the poll released today:

Just looking at the cover tells you a lot, it’s about the imagery of fear and terror, not facts.

“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Well by all means, let’s “connect the dots”, but let’s use history and data rather than sloppy questions like this:

What’s hilarious about this question is that the memory of such events is aided by the stories in the mainstream media, and what we are seeing is a positive feedback loop. More on that below.

These are probably the most pointless and loaded questions ever to be put into a poll about weather, why? because short-term memory is better than long-term, and they play into this fact, biasing the results strongly. Plus, it has been shown that bad weather itself affects memory:

“We predicted and found that weather-induced negative mood improved memory accuracy,” he wrote in the study, which is published in the current Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Forgas speculated that a worse mood helps us to focus our attention on the surroundings and leads to a more thorough and careful thinking style, while happiness tends to reduce focus and increase both confidence and forgetfulness.

Yale makes no mention of this psychological tendency to remember better in bad weather in their study, nor do they correct for it. So then, it is no surprise to see results like this for weather in the last year:

(Update: in comments, Thomas has this to say:)

According to the poll 21% of respondents experience a tornado in the last year. Extrapolating that out to the U.S. population, that would mean that over 60 million Americans were affected by tornadoes in 2011. That strikes me as wildly inaccurate and falls into question whether this poll has any validity at all.

I’d really like to see what the last 10 years looks like in a similar question…but they wouldn’t dare do that, because it would not give the results they seek. Plus, the type of severe weather events listed above, have regional distributions. For example, the south far more likely to have tornadoes and hurricanes that the Pacific Northwest. And in any given year, a strong wind and a strong rainstorm are common events just about anywhere, yet they try to make normal weather part of the “extreme” weather pattern, without defining what “extreme” weather is to the person being polled.

But, by saying “we are taking a poll about extreme weather” and then including winds, rain, snowstorms, heat waves, cold snaps, etc, which are regular occurences, lumping them with tornadoes, hurricanes, etc…they bias the poll by association. It’s a clever trick, and it is also dishonest.

In stark contrast the agenda filled Yale poll by Anthony A. Leiserowitz, a Gallup poll from last week says that American don’t seem much concerned about global warming at all. In fact it is dead last in the concerns. They are getting desperate, in fact MSM coverage of climate issues has dropped significantly, according to Media Matters:

A Media Mattersreport released this week found that broadcast news coverage of climate change has dropped significantly since 2009, despite a series of key developments in climate scienceandpolitics.

This is why warmists need a new ploy, if they can make global warming about everyday weather, they’ll have a golden hammer. In my opinion, it is psychological terrorism.

Ok let’s look at that positive feedback loop of opinion aided by the MSM I mentioned earlier. For that, I’m reposting portions of:

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

Note the phrase I highlighted:“Despite common perception”. I was very pleased to see that in context with a conclusion from real data.

That “common perception” is central to the theme of “global climate disruption”, started by John P. Holdren in this presentation, which is one of the new buzzword phrases after “global warming” and “climate change” used to convey alarm.

Like Holdren, many people who ascribe to doomsday scenarios related to AGW seem to think that severe weather is happening more frequently. From a perception not steeped in the history of television technology, web technology, and mass media, which has been my domain of avocation and business, I can see how some people might think this. I’ve touched on this subject before, but it bears repeating again and in more detail.

Let’s consider how we might come to think that severe weather is more frequent than before. Using this Wikipedia timeline as a start, I’ve created a timeline that tracks the earliest communications to the present, adding also severe weather events of note and weather and news technology improvements for context.

Prior to 3500BC – Communication was carried out through paintings of indigenous tribes.

1520 – Ships on Ferdinand Magellan‘s voyage signal to each other by firing cannon and raising flags.

1776 The Pointe-à-Pitre hurricane was at one point the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. At least 6,000 fatalities occurred on Guadeloupe, which was a higher death toll than any known hurricane before it. It also struck Louisiana, but there was no warning nor knowledge of the deaths on Guadeloupe when it did. It also affected Antigua and Martinique early in its duration.

1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Hurricane San Calixto is considered the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclone of all time. About 22,000 people died when the storm swept over Martinique, St. Eustatius and Barbados between October 10 and October 16. Thousands of deaths also occurred offshore. Reports of this hurricane took weeks to reach US newspapers of the era.

1812 – The Aug. 19, 1812 New Orleans Hurricane that didn’t appear in the Daily National Intelligencer/(Washington, DC) until later September. Daily National Intelligencer. Sept. 22, 1812, p. 3. Dreadful Hurricane. The following letters present an account of the ravages of one of those terrific storms to which the Southern extreme of our continent is so subject. Extract of a letter from Gen. Wilkinson, dated New Orleans, August 22.

1906 – Reginald Fessenden used a synchronous rotary-spark transmitter for the first radio program broadcast, from Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible.

1914 – teletype intrduced as a news tool The Associated Press introduced the “telegraph typewriter” or teletype into newsrooms in 1914, making transmission of entire ready to read news stories available worldwide.

1920 – The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan, which survives today as all-news format station WWJ under ownership of the CBS network.

1946 – The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called “the country’s first permanent commercial television network” on August 15, 1946

1947 – July 27th. The WSR-1 weather surveillance radar, cobbled together from spare parts of the Navy AN/APS-2F radar was put into service in Norfolk, NE. It was later replaced by improved models WSR-3 and WSR-4

1948 – The first successful “tornado forecast” issued, and successfully predicted the 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes which were two tornadoes which struck Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 20 and March 25.

In 1953, Donald Staggs, an electrical engineer working for the Illinois State Water Survey, made the first recorded radar observation of a “hook echo” associated with a tornadic thunderstorm.

1957 the WSR-57 the first ‘modern’ weather radar, is commissioned by the U.S. Weather Bureau

1971 – Ray Tomlinson is generally credited as having sent the first email across a network, initiating the use of the “@” sign to separate the names of the user and the user’s machine.

1972 – Radio Shack stores introduce “The Weather Cube”, the first mass marketed weather alert radio. (page 77 here) allowing citizens to get weather forecasts and bulletins in their home for only $14.95

1974 the WSR-74 the second modern radar system is put into service at selected National Weather Service office in the United States and exported to other countries.

1975 – The Altair 8800, the world’s first home computer kit was introduced in the January edition of popular electronics

1975-1976 NOAA Weather Radio network expanded from about 50 transmitters to 330 with a goal of reaching 70 percent of the populace with storm warning broadcasts.

1977 – Radio Shack introduces a weather radio with built in automatic alerting that will sound off when the National Weather Service issues an alert on the new expanded NOAA Weather Radio network with over 100 stations. Page 145 here

1977 – The Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced home microcomputers was introduced.

1978 – NOAA Weather Radio receivers with automatic audio insertion capabilities for radio and TV audio began to become widely installed.

1979 – The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G) was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network.

1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) is founded by Ted Turner.Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States.

1980 – A heatwave hit much of the United States, killing as many as 1,250 people in one of the deadliest heat waves in history.

1981 – Home satellite dishes and receivers on C-band start to become widely available.

1981 – The IBM Personal Computer aka IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981, it set a standard for x86 systems still in use today.

1982, May 2nd – The Weather Channel (TWC) is launched by John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo with 24 hour broadcasts of computerized weather forecasts and weather-related news.

1983 – Sony released the first consumer camcorder—the Betamovie BMC-100P

1983 – The first 1G cellular telephone network launched in the USA was Chicago-based Ameritech using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone.

1984 – The Apple Macintosh computer, with a built in graphical interface, was announced. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984“. The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 and is now considered a “watershed event”.

1985 – Panasonic, RCA, and Hitachi began producing camcorders that recorded to full-sized VHS cassette and offered up to 3 hours of record time. TV news soon began to have video of news and weather events submitted from members of the public.

1989 – Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN

1989 – August Sony announced the Sony ProMavica (Magnetic Video Camera) electronic still camera, considered the first widely available electronic camera able to load images to a computer via floppy disk.

1991 – The 1991 Perfect Storm hits New England as a Category 1 hurricane and causes $1 billion dollars in damage. Covered widely in TV and print, it later becomes a movie starring George Clooney.

1992 – Neil Papworth sends the first SMS (or text message).

1992 – August 16-28 Hurricane Andrew, spotted at sea with weather satellites, is given nearly continuous coverage on CNN and other network news outlets as it approaches Florida. Live TV news via satellite coverage as well as some Internet coverage is offered. It was the first Category 5 hurricane imaged on NEXRAD.

1996 – The Movie “Twister” was released on May 10, showing the drama and science of severe weather chasing in the USA midwest.

1999 – Dr. Kevin Trenberth posts a report and web essay titled The Extreme Weather Events of 1997 and 1998 citing “global greenhouse warming” as a cause. Trenberth recognizes “wider coverage” but dismisses it saying: “While we are indeed exposed to more and ever-wider coverage of the weather, the nature of some of the records being broken suggests a deeper explanation: that real changes are under way.”

2002 – Google News page was launched in March. It was later updated to so that users can request e-mail “alerts” on various keyword topics by subscribing to Google News Alerts.

2004 – December: A freak snowstorm hits the southernmost parts of Texas and Louisiana, dumping snow into regions that do not normally witness winter snowfall during the hours leading up to December 25 in what is called the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm.

2004 – DSL began to become widely accepted in the USA, making broadband Internet connections affordable to most homes.

2004 – On November 19, the Website “Real Climate” was introduced, backed by Fenton communications, to sell the idea of climate change from “real scientists”.

2005 – August, Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic damage along the Gulf Coast of the United States, forcing the effective abandonment of southeastern Louisiana (including New Orleans) for up to 2 months and damaging oil wells that sent gas prices in the U.S. to an all-time record high. Katrina killed at least 1,836 people and caused at least $75 billion US in damages, making it one of the costliest natural disasters of all time. TV viewers worldwide watched the storm strike in real time, Internet coverage was also timely and widespread.

2006 – Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24. It went on to limited theater release and home view DVD. It was the first entertainment film about global warming as a “crisis”, with hurricane Katrina prominently featured as “result” of global warming.

2006 – The short instant message service Twitter was launched July 15, 2006

The 2008 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak was a deadly tornado outbreak affecting the Southern United States and the lower Ohio Valley from February 5 to February 6, 2008. With more than 80 confirmed tornados and 58 deaths, the outbreak was the deadliest in the U.S. since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 76 across Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was widely covered live on US media.

2011 – On January 4th, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that Internet had surpassed television as the preferred source for news, especially among younger people.

2011 – March, notice of an Earthquake off the coast of Japan was blogged near real-time thanks to a USGS email message alert before TV news media picked up the story, followed by A Tsunami warning. A Japanese TV news helicopter with live feed was dispatched and showed the Tsunami live as it approached the coast of Japan and hit the beaches. Carried by every major global news outlet lus live streamed on the Internet, it was the first time a Tsunami of this magnitude was seen live on global television before it impacted land.

Compare the reach and speed of communications and news reporting at the beginning of this timeline to the reach and speed of communications and news reporting technology around the beginning of the 20th century. Then compare that to the beginning of the 21st century. Compare again to what we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

With such global coverage, instant messaging, and Internet enabled phones with cameras now, is it any wonder that nothing related to severe weather or disaster escapes our notice any more? Certainly, without considering the technological change in our society, it would seem as if severe weather events and disasters are becoming much more frequent.

Which speaks to the phrase: “Despite common perception” which I highlighted at the beginning. The speed of weather tracking and communications technology curve aids in our “common perception” of severe weather events. The reality of severe weather frequency though, is actually different. While we may see more of it, that happens because there are millions more eyes, ears, cameras, and networks than ever before.

1. There are less Tornadoes in the USA

2. Global tropical cyclone activity, as measured by frequency and ACE is at the lowest in 30 years, despite 2010 being claimed as the warmest year ever:

Global Tropical Cyclone ACE (Dr. Ryan N. Maue, FSU)

3. And now, back to our original seed for this long thread, no effect in global flooding events:

Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.

Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour.

Finally, this parting note.

While our world has seen the explosion of TV news networks, Internet News websites. personal cameras and recording technology, smartphones with cameras, and the ability to submit a photo or movie or live video feed virtually anywhere, anytime, giving us reporting of weather and disaster instantly on the scene, where tornadoes live on TV is becoming a ho-hum event, there’s one set of elusive phenomena that still hasn’t seen an increase in credible reporting and documentation:

UFO’s, Loch Ness monster, and Bigfoot.

We still haven’t seen anything credible from the millions of extra electronic eyes and ears out there, and people still marvel over old grainy images. You’d think if they were on the increase, we’d know about it. ;-)

Proponents of drastic curbs on greenhouse gas emissions claim that such emissions cause global warming and that this exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat, droughts, floods and storms such as hurricanes and cyclones. But what matters is not the incidence of extreme weather events per se but the impact of such events—especially the human impact. To that end, it is instructive to examine trends in global mortality (i.e. the number of people killed) and mortality rates (i.e. the proportion of people killed) associated with extreme weather events for the 111-year period from 1900 to 2010.

This is due to better warnings, and yes, the MSM (especially TV and radio) is key to getting those warnings out.

1. When using our dataset, it is best to use the damage numbers as tabulated by the US NWS as they are consistent over time

2. That said, 2011 damage is qualitatively indistinguishable from 1974 and 1954 1953 at >;$20B

3. That would give a simple baseline expectation of 1 in 20 for 2011, but half or twice that would not be implausible given the uncertainties, so between 1 in 10 and 1 in 40

4. For 2012 and looking ahead there are two big question marks, one more certain than the other. Urbanization is increasing, which means that the chance of large losses increases (somewhat at the expense of smaller and medium losses of course). And there has been a notable and significant decline in the incidence of strong tornadoes in recent decades

The decades leading up to 2011 convinced many that the tornado threat had been reducedto the point that 100 fatality tornadoes and 500 fatality years were in the past. After all,neither figure had been exceeded in the U.S. in over 50 years. The National WeatherService implemented a nationwide network of Doppler weather radars in the 1990s.Warning lead time doubled, and then almost doubled again, providing sufficient timefor families to receive a warning and take shelter. Television stations used sophisticatedgraphics to cover tornadoes with ever-increasing accuracy. Street level tracking softwareallowed TV viewers to know the exact location of a tornado and how close it might getto their home.

In this environment, a tornado that killed 10 or more people was nationalnews and could grab the attention of the public for days and perhaps weeks. In 1999 oneof the most powerful tornadoes ever documented struck a metropolitan area and resultedin 36 deaths, which while tragic, was only a fraction of the toll that might have beenexpected from a tornado like this at the start of the 20th century. The benchmark for whatconstituted a major tornado event was much different than 1974, when the 3-4 April“Super Outbreak” killed over 300 people. Things were different now, or so many peoplethought.

We begin by summarising the damages and fatalities from U.S. tornadoes in 2011. Next,we examine the tornado outbreak as it relates to the historical record. The next sectionlooks at the role that extreme weather played, followed by a discussion of some of thevulnerabilities that are known to increase fatalities from tornadoes. We then considerwhat can be done to limit damages and fatalities from future tornado outbreaks. Finally,we discuss whether or not this was an event that can be expected to occur again and thenwe conclude.

…

Three previous seasons—1953, 1965 and 1974—now rival damage in 2011. Normaliseddamage exceeded US$20 billion in 1953 and 1965 and exceeded US$10 billion in1974. The 1953 season provides perhaps the best historical comparison with 2011, as much of the damage in 1965 and 1974 occurred in just one outbreak. Damage in 1965is attributable to the Palm Sunday outbreak, while damage in 1974 occurred in the 2-3April “Super Outbreak”. 1953 had multiple damaging outbreaks in different parts of thecountry. One of the worst tornadoes of 1953 occurred in Worcester, MA, and ranked firstin normalised damage until the Joplin tornado of 2011.

“If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase,” said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.

“It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often,” Dixon said.

But he said it would be “a terrible mistake” to relate the up-tick to climate change.

Every time warmist academics try to push these ridiculous opinion polls as proof of “global warming makes weather more severe and more frequent” all it takes is a casual look at the data to know they are blowing hot air.

I give carte blanche permission to repost this article far and wide, bloggers, have at it.

60% of Americans have personally experienced “extreme high winds” in the last year? What is “extreme high wind” anyway? Surely hurricane-force at least. Living on the Gulf Coast, the last time I experienced a hurricane-force wind was in 2008. It must be really, really windy where those 60% live.

According to the poll 21% of respondents experencie a tornado in the last year. Extrapolating that out to the U.S. population, that would mean that over 60 million Americans were affected by tornadoes in 2011. That strikes me as wildly inaccurate and falls into question whether this poll has any validity at all.

Ha. Bigfoot… Russian scientists thought they actually existed. Google Zana bigfoot… Out of boredom, I looked much closer to see what I can find… I came away being convinced that they are real. Go figure. You just have to find the right places for actual stuff, not silly things by MSM. I’ve heard that we could not duplicate the movement of that bigfoot in that grainy video. Also, how to be able to tell real foot prints from fake ones (yes there are actual real foot prints).

Keep it in mind… Panda bears once thought were to be extinct… It took many years to find them because we knew very little about them. Once we found them, we gained much more knowledge on how they function in the wild and were much easier to find them.

That could be said the same thing for bigfoot if they actually existed. The point is that we attack some things that we clearly do not understand or know much. I learned that mistake a long time ago and vowed never to do that and always keep open mind and be skeptical of everything…

I see Wiki did not learn of Göbekli Tepe 10,000-12,000 years ago, the earliest civilization known so far.

All I know is that after living in the same So Cal city (Torrance) for 30 years
that the entire temperature range has shifted almost 10F lower.
We used to get four months of nights over 70F, now there’s a handful.
We used to get only two months of nights under 55F, now its six months.
I want my global warming!

Simple minded nonsense. Nothing but alarmism with no scientific basis whatsoever. In fact no link exists between weather and such gradual warming as may have occurred. Meanwhile the link between weather and La Nina is firm. As is the link between spring temperatures and tornadoes.
And i don’t know what the Warmists will do if the assertion that water vapor is a negative feedback is verified as claimed in the link below. That would mean that there is actually little to worry about even if CO2 were and important forcing agent, which it is not.http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=3597

The only conclusion to be taken from this poll (or propaganda), is that when it comes to climate, both science and academia are now totally dishonest and corrupt. You can’t do any deals with people like that, because they’ll never keep their word.

Time for a root and branch clear out, tear it down and make a clean start.

With more and more half-assed scientific studies and “polls” originating from Ivy League institutions like Yale, the reading public is also beginning to ‘connect the dots’. These prestigious universities are expensive money pits, adhering to a radically warped political point of view, and have little regard for the proper implementation of the Scientific Method.

“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Funny, I just heard that new “connect the dots” meme yesterday: Bill McKibben’s latest project – “It’s Time to Connect the Dots Between Climate Change and Extreme Weather”:

REPLY: LOL! I guess you didn’t visit Alaska or Eastern Europe this year. But, I was referring to the last decade, not the season. Thanks for proving my point of this article where people like yourself who don’t have the wherewithal to distinguish focus on such things. – Anthony

Is it conceivable that Anthony A. Leiserowitz has or is ‘losing the faith’ Is this poll actually an attempt to buoy up their own beliefs in CAGW? Are they riddled with self doubt?
Similar to handing out loads of invitations to your own birthday party, doncha just panic sometimes that no-one is gonna show up. so, you rush round quizzing as many as possible – just in case it all falls flat and turns into One Monumental Fail.
In answer to your questions Mr Leiserowitz , CAGW is now flat. And failed.
Sorry.

I, like TomL ,live on the gulf coast, and I also don’t remember anything close to what I would call an extreme high wind event. Several years ago when I lived in Vermont there was a wind storm with 70 mph winds, it might have been a tornado. That is the only extreme wind I remember in years. It must be quite windy between S.W. Florida and Vermont.

Since the science is “settled”, can someone please explain the mechanism by which CO2 can cause extreme weather without raising global temperatures? I must have missed that part in my college science courses.

This study is really just a poll to see how well the MSM and AGW crowd is doing their job . Most people have no real knowledge of weather extremes or global warming beyond what we are told by one side or the other. Most don’t search the data and read all the blogs to make up their own minds about the subject. What’s more, most people aren’t concerned about enough about the subject to take the time to even give it much thought.
The fact that most people un-concerned about AGW or whatever it is called this week should tell us something. If people were really concerned about sea level rise etc., ocean front property would be being given away. I assure you it is not.

In typical social science fashion, it is packed with utterly meaningless statistics that can be used by ‘policy-makers’ to provide support for whatever they want support for. A very valuable document (/sarc). Also, it cannot be replicated because he provides no information whatever about the nature of the interviews, the questions asked, the selection of participants or their social class. He does reveal that 595 people participated in the survey mentioned below (0.0002% of the 2003 US population)

I loved this quote from his 2003 survey:

The second highest response was planting a tree (49%), an action that has become perhaps the quintessential, symbolic “environmental act.”

Louis says:
April 18, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Since the science is “settled”, can someone please explain the mechanism by which CO2 can cause extreme weather without raising global temperatures? I must have missed that part in my college science courses.

Didn’t you get the message? It’s not ‘global warming’ any more; it’s ‘climate change’. See, man is causing ‘climate change’, and the proof is all the ‘extreme’ weather we’re hearing about. And even though there doesn’t seem to be any warming lately, we all know CO2 is a ‘pollutant’, and pollutants are probably causing climate change, and man makes CO2 by burning coal and gasoline, and. . .

Well, you know. After all, 97% of all the scientists agree. Or was that 97% of doctors, who said that Camels are “Kind to your T-Zone”?

Mojave Max, a desert tortoise, is supposed to emerge from his burrow each year to signal the start of springlike weather in Southern Nevada.

Max finally dragged his shell out of the ground for the first time at 12:41 p.m. Tuesday, 4/17/2012. It was the latest the desert tortoise has emerged from his winter slumber since 2000, besting the old mark by a full three days.

My local 24 hour news radio station (WBBM Chicago), a 50,000 Watt clear channel radio station,
put out a news blurb this A.M. about the Yale study.
It said ( I called the radio station for a transcript, they would only point me to a NY Times article) IIRC, “Yale study says 69% believe in global warming, and people believe the weather is getting worse”, 69% seemed high.
It was just a 10 second blurb saying the above.

Excerpts from the article:
—
When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, “global warming is affecting the weather in the United States,” 69 percent of respondents in the new poll said they agreed, while 30 percent disagreed.
—
A large majority of climate scientists say the climate is shifting in ways that could cause serious impacts, and they cite the human release of greenhouse gases as a principal cause. But a tiny, vocal minority of researchers contests that view, and has seemed in the last few years to be winning the battle of public opinion despite slim scientific evidence for their position.
==============================================
Where did the NY Times get their 69% number from ?
There is no 69% agreement on anything unless you combine categories.
Is there ?
Of course I knew by the time I got home, Anthony would be all over the story :)

The questions reflect a particular narrative, so the poll wasn’t really about the weather, the poll was checking to see how the narrative is coming along. So if 60 million extrapolated people would consider themselves to have been affected by tornado activity, presumably by watching the coverage on TV, then the narrative has indeed been effective.

Voters affected by a narrative are far greater in number than people affected by actual events, so in terms of political power (which is what ANY poll is really about), reality takes a distant back seat to the narrative.

Guys, I’m sure most all of you have experienced extreme weather during the past 12 months. I myself have experienced extreme weather for every one of my 58 years. I was so disgusted with extreme weather in the mid-west that I swore in 1973 I’d never return there (or east of the Rockies, for that matter). Whether it was excessive rain, snow, wind, wildfires, drought, floods, tornadoes, ball lightning – there has always been something cool to talk about. (I have been fortunate enough not to witness a hurricane or cyclone, and none of the above events caused serious damage to me and mine.) A place as large and climatically diverse as North America means few of us can dodge it. I haven’t always lived in California (and hopefully will be moved out by year’s end), and I do travel a lot (yes, despite swearing in 1973, throughout the U.S.), but I also watch the news. Every year the national news includes my home town (and Californians are practically the center of the universe) in the weather, I assume it is nationally extreme. And we have extreme fires, floods, snowfalls, droughts – frequently all in the same year.

The MSM always does their best to make every disaster personal, so that I (and 60 million other Americans) think we were ground zero for the latest rain, snow…. It was a poor question, because it makes it easy for everyone to say ‘yes’. It was qualitative. And it doesn’t account for my friends and me who went out looking – successfully – for tornadoes, and ski trips that always had exceptionally little snow, or were exceptionally cold.) That latter has a lot to do with it. We changed locations. Kansas is cold in the winter – but some of those mountain tops were unbelievable! (i.e., extreme to me)

During college, I worked as a truck driver (furniture). Loading a truck in Texas during Christmas break while wearing a t-shirt, and unloading in Minnesota two days later with only a t-shirt and a denim jacket in cold so severe electrons didn’t flow fast enough to keep fluorescent lights glowing made me think I was experiencing extreme weather. After all, I was going to school in Southern California – the beach. (Denim was sufficient for any cold weather. Just two years after leaving the Midwest – why would I think the weather had changed?) That kind of cold was extreme – to me!

Oh – and please don’t correct me on the frozen electrons. I was a physics major. I know why those low temperatures kept the lights out. I just prefer my story. I was never so cold, and I think the universe felt it. That was just one of my many ‘extreme cold’ experiences.

People only know what they are told about weather related events.
How many here know that in late 1978 the Kafue River flooded catastrophically after a concentrated series of storms over its area of origin in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia?
In one small area near Luanshya at least eighteen villages disappeared from the face of the earth, no trace of any of them could be found two weeks later. How many lived in those villages? No-one knows or ever will. How do I know of this devastation? My father was one of those who went searching the relevant areas.
The storm surge in the Kafue affected people living near the Zambezi, into which the Kafue flows, for a very long way. The Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique couldn’t cope with the flood with deaths and wide-spread destruction occurring.
If it is not reported, it didn’t happen according to our corrupted MSM.

I think this illustrates the change in emphasis from the science to the political phase. Having established a narrative to support Agenda 21 [ http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/ ] during the warming phase of the climate cycle using the power of government grant and subsidy to tempt science in to support their Agenda, it is now time to move away from the science which is going against them. The tactic now is to create as much fog, fluff, chaff, dust to obfuscate and confuse so that no coherent arguments will be heard as the data turns against them. Polls like this are purely political in nature. Usually worded as “Do you agree that…….? On a scale of 1 to 10 indicate how much you agree with this statement. Only the number 1 will show: “Do not agree” ,giving a 9 to 1 chance in favour of the pollsters desired answer. Most people who do not agree but who also do not understand the question scientifically will shove in a “neutral” number such as 4,5, and 6 which is then recorded as an “agree”. All good stuff to drive the agenda forward now the science is coming unstuck. I wish I knew who the “Them” who seem to be running the show actually are. Soros? Suzuki? Not nearly powerful enough. There has to be another layer above them.

Edgar says:Poor Yorek says: “Just a friendly editorial comment:
“Problem is, the data does not support it.” => ” … the data do not support it.””
Aah! Doncha just love the Grammar Nazis …. ?

REPLY: No, I don’t, mostly they have nothing else to contribute – Anthony

Especially when they get it wrong. From Merriam-Webster’s usage discussion of data:Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard. (Emphasis added)

As for the poll, I wouldn’t call those questions “sloppy”; I’d say they’re deliberately biased questions. That sort of thorough sloppiness can’t be accidental. The “researchers” don’t even differentiate between extreme rain storms, extreme high winds, and hurricanes. Wouldn’t hurricanes have extreme high winds or extreme rain? Wouldn’t tornadoes be considered extreme high winds too? If the respondent had a tornado warning in his area but no tornado hit, does that still qualify as having “personally experienced” a tornado?

And, at least a quarter of the U.S. population believes in astrology… Belief in astrology is more prevalent in Europe, where 53 percent of those surveyed thought it is “rather scientific” and only a minority (39 percent) said it is not at all scientific.y. So much for European sophistication. No wonder they gulped the Kool-Aid down.
———————————————————————————————————————————
But please correct if its wrong but I have heard it said that more than 50% of the US population believe the earth is 4000 years old.!

I have always struggled with the phrase: “climate change” It perplexes me. I think of Yosemite being an ex-Californian. I have learned that glaciers once carved that fantastic granite valley. The glaciers are obviously gone now except for a few permanent ice patches in the back country. So I assume that represents climate change. It just took eons. But people use the term to mean rather short term events like; Its cloudy today. It wasn’t cloudy yesterday. ergo climate change. I have a problem with this free wheeling and loosy goosy definition.

This poll is so stupid it hurts. It’s barely worthy of even debunking. Poll the public on how confused they are, based on anecdotal memory recall, then try to assert this implies something. Yale and George Mason University you say? Embarrassing for them…

Here are some of the unusual events I can think of over the past 10 years:
1) Multiple low elevation snow events (whereas, previous to the past 10 years, they would be much fewer and further between)
2) Generally cooler than normal springs and summers
3) Early onset of fall leaf turning

@FrankK says:
April 18, 2012 at 3:51 pm
———————————————————————————————————————————
But please correct if its wrong but I have heard it said that more than 50% of the US population believe the earth is 4000 years old.!

========================

I think it would be somewhat difficult to prove that you haven’t heard it said.

I don’t think that 50% of the US population believes the earth is only 4,000 years old.

I think this survey reveals that the general public is as uneducated about weather and climate as main stream climate scientists and university professors. At least the general public has a good excuse.

Don’t rely on the poll. Just ask anyone over 40. I’m not a climate scientist, just a former naval weather observer and I’ve never seen so many oddities. A couple of more years of continuing irregular seasonal patterns and you won’t need a poll.

[REPLY: Anyone over 60 will tell you he’s seen all of this before. Please check our site policy and submit a valid e-mail address. The fact that your ISP registers out of Washington, D.C. suggests that you won’t and that you are not who you pretend to be. The word for that kind of behavior, these days, is “Gleicking”. -REP]

“Edgar says:
Poor Yorek says: “Just a friendly editorial comment:
“Problem is, the data does not support it.” => ” … the data do not support it.””
Aah! Doncha just love the Grammar Nazis …. ?

REPLY: No, I don’t, mostly they have nothing else to contribute – Anthony

Especially when they get it wrong. From Merriam-Webster’s usage discussion of data:”
====================================================================
1. Firstly, what part of “friendly” did you (pl) not understand? A bit touchy perhaps? Though this can probably be understood, given some of the acerbic comments made here.
2. Merriam-Webster may not be the only canonical source on usage. For example, American Heritage states: “data is now used both as a plural and as a singular collective. The plural connotation is the more appropriate in formal usage. The singular is acceptable to 50 percent of the Usage Panel.” Seemingly less of a consensus than observed for some other issues. Whether blogs represent “formal usage” can be debated, but as one charged with the training and education of scientists, my professor hat sometimes stays on even after leaving campus (an occupational hazard). In any case, my intention was not to be acerbic v.s. point #1.
3. It is true that I have not contributed much here if one means by “contribution,” post volume, though I read the site frequently and have used what I learn here in discussions with academic colleagues who are engaged in climate or solar-related research. I have written a few substantive posts (one I think on some technical issues regarding how “heat” is defined) and a few merely humorous (or attempts thereat) ones. So please don’t lump me in with the Grammar Nazis.

Edgar says:
Poor Yorek says: “Just a friendly editorial comment:
“Problem is, the data does not support it.” => ” … the data do not support it.””
Aah! Doncha just love the Grammar Nazis …. ?

REPLY: No, I don’t, mostly they have nothing else to contribute – Anthony

Especially when they get it wrong. From Merriam-Webster’s usage discussion of data:
==========================================

1. Perhaps you (pl) did not read the word “friendly?” The comment was not intended to be snarky.

2. Merriam-Webster is perhaps not the only authority. For example, American-Heritage states: “Data is now used both as a plural and as a singular collective. The plural construction is the more appropriate in formal usage. The singular is acceptable to 50 percent of the Usage Panel.” 50% is less of a consensus than in some other areas, of course. As one charged with the education of scientists, perhaps my professor-hat stayed on after leaving campus: in any case, vide supra #1.

3. Perhaps it is true that I have not contributed “much” to this site, though I did write at least once on some technical distinctions involving the definition of “heat” and “work.” Still, the moniker of “Grammar Nazi with nothing else to contribute” is a bit facile.

REPLY: Ah but you see that last quote in totality is your own construct, not mine, nor Edgar’s. I didn’t change “data” because the complaint was invalid, as you point out. Some people want perfection. I can’t provide it, especially when WUWT is free. – Anthony

Edit note: “Note the phrase I highlighted” … nothing highlighted.
________
The poll demonstrates three possible things to me:
1) The way that slanted questions can generate desired responses;
2) How mis-interpretation of the results can be editorially slanted;
and 3) How public perception can be distorted by media repetition of a false meme.

Perhaps, with respect to #3, it may be a valid measure of how misinformed the public is.

*Weather extremes?* Sure. On the eastern slopes of the Cascades — trees are just beginning to push out leaves. This is about one month behind 2010 when back to back nightly frost caused fully leafed out walnut trees to drop all their leaves. Green pea sized sweet cherries turned black and dropped. No fruit on either that year.

2. “in desperation, Yale and George Mason University are trying to use a poorly worded and loaded poll to convince us that “weather is climate”.

climate (n) cli·mate [ klmət ]
typical weather in region: the average weather or the regular variations in weather in a region over a period of years
place with particular weather: a place with a particular type of weather

2. “in desperation, Yale and George Mason University are trying to use a poorly worded and loaded poll to convince us that “weather is climate”.

climate (n) cli·mate [ klmət ]
typical weather in region: the average weather or the regular variations in weather in a region over a period of years
place with particular weather: a place with a particular type of weather

Also: regarding “Thomas” (his comment appended to the main post body above) ; I just looked at a graphic of all states that experienced deadly tornadoes in 2010. As far as I can tell, those states (with pop in millions) are these: Louisiana 4.6
Oklahoman 3.8
Kansas 2.9
Arkansas 2.9
Tennessee 6,4
Missouri 6
Alabama4,8
missippi 3
North carolina 9,7
Virginia 8,1
Massachusetts 6,6
Minnesota 5.3
Georgia 9.8

Now, did everyone in each of those states personally experience a tornado? Obviously not. But this is only a list of states where tornado fatalities occurred. Add in all the states where surely non-lethal tornadoes affected humans and I am sure we can use the above list as a guide.

However difficult “Thomas” may find it, these states total 74 million people, or 25%of the US population. Wow!

When 21% of the people polled said they had experienced a tornado, what they probably meant was that they had personally seen it on TV. This could probably explain most of the other poll results as well.
Chris

“Scientists have found other indications of global cooling….
Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept
up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing
temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest’s
recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.”

Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
It is amazing how gullible the average person is. It has to do with lack of memory. Most people can hardly remember half a lifetime. We should all remember that life is short, even when we attain great age, and maturity comprises much more than time. Maturity is required for one to realize when he is being taken-in. Stay mindful that the smooth talker is probably trying to trick you in one way or another, and keep your hand on your wallet.

My highest science qualification is a C.S.E. (certificate of secondary education ) grade 1 in physics but even with my lowly knowledge when i read the question about “extreme” weather my first thought was define “extreme”

How is it that “ragnarcarlson” is able to post the same comment twice, once at 1:22 am and immediately following? If I think something I write was not sent and try a second time I get an instant reminder of something like “We think you already said that.” Maybe there is a new letter or something, but still, it is the same post.
———————–

temperature records
More importantly, if I understand (from ragnar) the comment at 1.: it is that warm temperature records have been broken – proving Anthony is wrong. This is a misunderstanding of the issue of warming versus warm. Assume that low temperature records are distributed normally. Likewise for high temperatures. Meanwhile, assume there are periods of time, maybe 30 years or so, when there is a cooling trend. Toward the end of that cooling trend records will be broken on the low tail of the normal distribution. Now it stays at this coolness level for several years. Statistically, records will continue to be broken more frequently at the low side than at the high side throughout the cool period even though it is no longer cooling. One can flip this pattern if there has been a slight warming. So now, say, things are a bit warmer. Records will be broken more to the high side as the “mean” of the distribution slides to the ‘right’ or high side. Even as the temperature slides over the hump (highest mean) and starts a cyclic decline things will still be warm (or warmer than in the previous trough). More warm records will be broken than cold records broken.

rag, this is quite silly, so the population of every state that had a tornado is about 25% of tne US. And from this you assume that almost 100% of the people in those states experienced a tornado?
Really?

“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Actually, EVERY people and every historic era recollect a Golden Age – always a period isolated by either place or time, too distant for anyone to challenge its authenticity. No one can say, “Hey, I remember those days (or that place), and it sure wasn’t golden.” because nobody was around to see it. Consequently , only the poets and storytellers (and climate scientists) have a license to recount “the Golden Age”.

Bill;
A prominent Swedish scientist was quoted as saying that the tragedy of climate science was/is that it arose during the coldest few decades of the last 10,000 years, and consequently its baseline assumptions about what is “normal” are based on that abnormal period.